Development and research into moving particle type display apparatuses which perform a display based on charged particles which move when a voltage is applied thereto is being carried forward vigorously in recent years, and great attention is focused above all on an electrophoresis display apparatus.
This type of electrophoresis display apparatus is provided with a back substrate and a front substrate arranged with a predetermined gap in between, and an insulating liquid and charged particles are placed in the gap between these substrates. Furthermore, each pixel is provided with a first electrode having a large display area and a second electrode having a small display area on one substrate (back substrate). For example, when a monochrome display is performed, a color difference is used for a display as follows:    (1) When charged particles are attracted to the first electrode and scattered over a wide area, the first electrode is covered with the charged particles, and therefore the color (e.g., black) of the charged particles is visible to an observer.    (2) When charged particles are attracted to the second electrode and concentrated in a narrow area, the color (e.g., white) of the area where the first electrode is formed is visible to the observer.
There is also a proposal on a display apparatus constructed in such a way that a shielding layer is placed to hide the second electrode and charged particles attracted by the second electrode are not visible to the observer (Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. H09-211499).
However, the above described electrophoresis display apparatus has problems yet to be solved in aspects of display quality. This seems to be attributable to the following two factors:
First, in the case (1) above, it is desirable that charged particles be scattered over the entire first electrode at substantially the same density and the first electrode be hidden behind the charged particles. However, in reality, the density of the charged particles is reduced in areas adjacent to the second electrode and the “color of the base (that is, the color of the area where the first electrode is formed)” is reflected and made visible. For this reason, the display quality deteriorates. The reasons for such a phenomenon are not clearly defined but there are a few possible reasons as follows:    1) Since the second electrode has the same polarity as that of the charged particles, an electrostatic repulsive force may be generated between the second electrode and charged particles.    2) When a barrier is placed so as to separate a pixel, this causes the “area where the second electrode is formed” and areas adjacent thereto not to become level but inclined and as a result, the charged particles may be hardly at rest.